Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue is a byword for genteel respectability, zealously guarded by its inhabitants. The kind of neighbourhood where every bush is trim and no brick out of place. So the local United Synagogue, too, you might imagine would be a bastion of conservatism, the eptiome of the decorous traditions of Minhag Anglia.

Regarded by many in the yeshivah world as posek hador – the leading authority on Jewish law of his day – he was head of Israel's Lithuanian community whose guidance was sought by rabbis from across the world.

Rabbi Reuven Stamov, 38, has been appointed as the first Masorti rabbi in Ukraine at a ceremony in Kiev.

Rabbi Stamov, who grew up in Ukraine to a secular family before moving to Israel in 2003, returned to the country of his birth in March this year following his ordination at the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary.

When an Israeli friend visited the Sephardi Synagogue in Lauderdale Road, she was shocked. “We were brought up viewing the Sephardim as the down- trodden, second-class citizens of Israel,” she said, “but here were Sephardim elegantly dressed in top hats, holding decorous services accompanied by a melodious choir. These were Sephardi aristocrats, something I never dreamed possible.”

Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar has sent a letter to hundreds of Orthodox Rabbis, urging them to help overturn the Israeli government’s recent decision to recognise and fund Conservative and Reform rabbis.

More than a thousand people lined the streets of Stamford Hill to mourn one of its leading rabbis who drowned off the Kent coast on Monday.

Rabbi Chaim Breisch, aged 59 according to police, was rescued with another man after struggling in a rough sea off Broadstairs but was pronounced dead on arrival after being taken by helicopter to hospital.